Symantec Updates Cause Chaos in China

Hello Kitty writes "According to Computerworld, a signature update to Symantec's anti-virus software has knocked out thousands of Chinese PCs. Apparently the latest update for the AV component of the various Norton packages mistook two system files in the Chinese edition of Windows XP SP2 for the 'Backdoor.Haxdoor' trojan. Piracy issues may complicate recovery, since once the updates are installed Symantec says the only hope for reviving an affected system is to re-copy the affected DLLs from the Windows restore disks. Everyone has their official restore disks handy, right?"

Probably not intentional

Although it seems easy to accuse Symantec of receiving bribes form Microsoft to try to make piracy in China more difficult, this is unlikely to be the case. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Do you want to PAY for that level of stupidity?

Okay, I understand when people say that patches cannot be tested against EVERY software package out there.

But to not test against the core files of the operating system you KNOW they will be installed upon?

And people pay an annual subscription fee for that kind of "service".

The pirates have the disks.

Oh, and who said this scenario wasn't tested?

Fascinating. So you are floating the possibility that this was PLANNED? And what possible reason could Symantic have for annoying their customers this much?

Oh, you don't happen to have a restore disk? Oh, you're running a pirated copy of Windows?

The "pirates" will have every CD and diskette ever made readily available to them.

The only people who won't have the disks are the home users who have been spending their lives doing things other than storing and tracking everything that ever touched their computer.

But they've been PAYING for the regular updates to PROTECT them from "problems".

Not to mention that many OEM's don't provide the right disks. You get a "recovery" CD which will reformat your box and re-install all the software TO THE CONDITION YOU ORIGINALLY RECEIVED THE BOX.

Too bad about all your files and pictures and such.

Oh, and who said this scenario wasn't tested?

Still waiting on the reasons why Symantec would do plan this and test it.

Yes.

All localized Windows versions? 33 MUI versions and 27 LIPs? Original XP, SP1, SP2 and other intermediate patched up versions?

Yes. If they need help I'm sure that VMWare will be happy to provide them some expertise (seeing as how they seem to be sorely lacking it). And than is JUST FOR INSTALLING THE PATCH.

And you don't need to test "other intermediate patched up versions".

This is a virus scanner. Right?

So they only need to test against the various released versions of the files. All they need is a set of DIRECTORIES with the files to be scanned in them.

So one box could have ALL the various patches for that system. Based upon the variances in the files. One box for the US release. One box for the Spanish release. Etc.

And as I said, they don't have to be physical boxes. VMWare can help out a whole lot in that regard.

It's called "Computer SCIENCE" for a reason.

Its not as bad as we think!

Microsoft to Symantec: "Its OK, its not like there are many pirated versions, remember we have Windows Genuine Advantage!"

How Long

...until some jackass posts a link to the files netapi32.dll and lsasrv.dll under the guise of a fix for these systems, but he has ACTUALLY infected with the backdoor.haxdoor virus?

Pre-pwned windows

Not a false positive. The Chinese pirated copies of windows probably come pre-installed with Backdoor.Haxdoor

Hypocrisy

I guess this thread is going to become full of posts in the spirit of "they got what they deserved", as if this was an anti-piracy measure. Of course, piracy of IP is only legitimate when commited within USA, otherwise it is "OMG commies are stealig our moneyz". This was an effing software bug, which casued trouble to everyone, legitimate users too, and I don't see how piracy talk could be relevant. As a side note, having recovery CD's does not have to do anything with piracy. If you pirate Windows, you have all the CD's you need.

Re:Hypocrisy

I do it. They got what they deserved. Not for pirating Windows but for installing Norton/Symantec products. Anybody that willing installs any product from that company deserves any bad thing that happens to their computer.

Blue Screen Of Effection

"CISRT said. "This issue has made a huge effection to Chinese people." I knew Symantec was effectionate because it wanted to screw my computer all the time. It's hard to decide what's worse - an infection or an "effection".

And Ballmer tells Xiang...

that the virus signature got lost in translation.

Radical change imminent

China is quick to legislate change. I believe after this, all of their social organizations will adopt Linux for the sake of national security.

Re:Radical change imminent

This is also a common cause of famine in China: the central planners tell each region how much rice they will grow in a season, and the beauraucrats tell them that's how much rice was grown. When that fails to be the case, people starve

Yes, that did happen, during the Great Leap Forward, about 40 years ago. These days provincial governments still bullshit about economic growth statistics, but not so grievously.

And of course it's not just a communists who try to save face and walk into disaster. "Mission Accomplished!"

Time for a Change

Sounds to me like it's time for a change. The Chinese have already demonstrated that when something from Western corporations runs amok they are quite willing to force a change on their people. I'm not saying it's right, it's just so.

Now, this problem has actually highlighted a bigger problem; that Windows is Western software controlled by Western interests. Even the ancillary software you need to run Windows effectively (read: anti-virus) is from third parties in the West who obviously wouldn't necessarily have the desires of the Chinese government in mind. Now, at best I can see the Chinese government is going to realize that their reliance on Western anti-virus solutions may be a flawed dependency and they will write their own Chinese-specific AV solution. At worst... this might just highlight to the Chinese government how vulnerable they are to a "cyber attack", either malicious or accidental that could potentially cripple them.

Microsoft might want to start "spinning", and quick. Chinese people are well aware there are better solutions out there than Windows for an operating system. It's only a matter of time before someone in power starts talking about "Red Flag Linux" and how it's openness can help prevent problems exactly like this... then it's all over for Microsoft in that market.

Yes, I realize the pirated Windows market is huge in China as well... but it's still a massive market for Microsoft to lose because of the accidental actions of one of their "trusted third parties".

Woe is Symantec

For years I always installed Symantec products, and before them Central Point [wikipedia.org] and Norton products. [wikipedia.org]

They worked, they worked well, and I could see how they helped me.

Somewhere along the line though they became first large, then irritating, then expensive to keep updated (pay for virus signature updates?), then finally began actually damaging systems.

And somewhere along the line I stopped buying their products, installing their products, and recommending their products.

I've come to view Microsoft the same way. Between excessive DRM, excessive hardware demands, and a generally customer hostile attitude I find it hard to think that I would ever move to a Vista machine. Thus far Windows 2000 still does everything that I need with a lot less hassle.

Someday though I will need to upgrade. The question is what will fill the gap? Linux still isn't there, nor are most Open Source replacements for common Microsoft and Adobe applications.

Is there a company that can step in with a viable replacement for Photoshop or MS Office? Can OpenOffice or GIMP make the final leap to become a reasonable and reliable alternative to those tools? I don't want something that sort of does everything that Photoshop does, I want a professional tool that does everything, and does it equally well.

The door is open, we're just waiting someone to step through.

Re:Woe is Symantec

And somewhere along the line I stopped buying their products, installing their products, and recommending their products.

I went through the same process, although I now recommend Linux when appropriate. The experience that turned me off Symantec was installing a new version that required activation, but would not activate. Support was hopeless -- asking the same question over and over ("do you have a firewall?"). Why the vendor of a security product should suggest that I turn off my firewall to activate their product, I just don't know -- anyway, I could see the queries in my squid logs.

Since then, I've seen machines crippled by malfunctioning Symantec rootkits. Yes -- I refer to them as rootkits since they have made un-installation impossible in some cases. For example, their uninstall program refuses to run in safe mode.

man I hate it being bundled

just another reason symantech is one product that immediately gets deleted from my computer.

Re:man I hate it being bundled

just another reason symantech is one product that immediately gets deleted from my computer.

      Good lord! And how exactly do you manage THAT? The thing is impossible to delete - at least for the layman...

Symantec updates have caused problems before.

And so has Microsoft updates....

neither of which had anything to do with piracy issues, but rather doing things to my at work system that broke and even removed other legal software. Adobe is guilty of this too.

What this really means? Well for symantec to effect pirated systems would mean that symantec software was also pirated (which just happens to run on Windows system). Because this is a symantec problem more then it is a windows problem..... I'd imagine users of symantec will better question the risk of using risk prevention software. And Pirates are less likely to use it, leaving the effected to be less pirates and more honest users.

A good way to kill pirates

Since most pirated installations don't have the install media either, it's a sure fired way to wipe out thousands of fake installs in one fell swoop.

In Soviet China...

In Soviet China, EVERYONE has "official restore" disks.

ugh - Norton?

Norton is the single worst application you could use on a PC.

At work we installed it on our CAD machines - and it totally killed the performance. We eventually switched to Panda, and have been really impressed. Saying that, Panda still has those bloody annoying popups telling the user it's doing something.

I wish the applications would just DO it, rather than constantly telling users about what they're abouts to do.

Was the anti virus s/w also pirated?

That would be funny. No mail in rebates in China.

Original install discs?

NOBODY has original install discs anymore. Go buy a PC and see if you get original install discs. You're screwed.
The best you can hope for now is that your machine allowed you to make a set of full system restore discs when you got it. Some of those will allow you to restore individual files, but many of these utilities just re-image your system drive, so you lose everything on there that was installed since the machine was new (at least, anything on the boot partition).

I'd say this is probably MORE destructive to people with legitimate copies, who probably just have such images. The pirates are more likely to have install CDs.

Slashdot idiocy

Look people they're just dumb. No company is intentionally going to want to shoot their foot off in China.

Business Partnerships

Could this be targeted at specific keys? This should be interesting as it unfolds.

dealextreme?

Is this why dealextreme.com is down or something totally unrelated?

Only problem is

the pirated versions of windows I ran (win2k), I had full install disks.
the oem versions (win98, winxp, winxp) I bought at best buy and other places, my only option is to wipe everything and reinstall.

So, I would be screwed on the machines where I am a legitimate paying customer, and hunky dory on the machines where I was pirating.

What if they're right?

[dons tin-foil hat]
What if they weren't really false alarms, and there really is a back-door in those DLLs? Isn't it a little suspicious that only the Chinese version was affected? Obviously what happened is that someone [nsa.gov] convinced Microsoft to add a back door into the Chinese version, and then, since Symantec didn't test against the Chinese version of windows, it wasn't on Symantec's white list.
[removes tin-foil hat]

Serves them right...

...for running symantec software.

Symantec got it kind of right...

Windows is a virus [ahajokes.com], but the proper name would not be Backdoor.Haxdoor... the files should have been detected as W32.Backdoor.MSoft.Windows, but it shouldn't have detected just two DLLs, the whole OS, the whole C:\WINNT and C:\WINDOWS directories. And the proper fix isn't to merely delete the files, the AV software needs to either patch the machine to turn it into a Mac and install OS X... or put Linux/any real OS on it.

Is it just me...

Or has there been a distinct drop in spam since this happened? :)

take conroll

I like the hands on approach of reading thought what the update is about, what it fixes and installing it at my own pace. I have done this with windows linux, and anything else I have used. Basically people are willing to abdicate control of their personal computers. Some are stupid and give control to anyone just to download a song, file-sharing software etc. Some give it to the companies they hope will protect them. I would say think of the problems we would have to put up with if those companies where not around. A lot of users are willing to install just about anything on their computers and if not for software warning them and restraining them albeit slightly we all would have a worse time of it. And so long as people install just anything (god help us) it does not matter what Operating system they are running.

Nortons down the drain

That's why Norton's AV sucks. I have been advising people against that package for a while now. I have seen many machines loaded with Norton's, and ad-ware. Not to mention the whole package runs like 6 different applications in the background and is a resource hog. Trend Micro Internet Security is still top dog in my opinion. It is easy On the machine and catches damn near everything. But if your a cheapskate and want free, AVG or Avast(if you have a 64-bit processor).

Antiviruses are scam

First - how many viruses cause comparable damage _ever_?

Second - once I tried testing several known AVs with some fresh dialers and trojans I've had (mostly as email attachments). Not a single one(!) has been detected by AVG, Avast, and Kaspersky.

All they do is detecting irrelevant (in the age of Internet) old "viruses", wasting your resources, and through occasional fuckups like this one doing real damage. Good thing if your AV is at least free one.

Of course,

The recovery disk shipped with most systems will reset the computer to factory state, deleting all user files. Everybody here does have a recent backup, don't they? And you have all checked recently that it works?

Lucky me and my machines.

The 10 computers in my office are all with Windows and Norton installed. All of the softwares were brought from an unknown CD vendor at a very reasonable price. At this moment everything seems still fine.
    Except some of the computers have an annoying banner popping up from the bottom-right corner of screen states "You possibly are a victim of privated software". I wish Norton would have taken this banner a malware.

testing is expensive...

But the funniest "bug" I've seen in an anti-virus software has come from F-Secure. An ancient version of their software had the uninstaller just delete everything from the folder it was installed in. A distant friend had installed it in c:/ and the uninstall had caused a huge havoc by the time the computer crashed!

Paid Software against Piracy?

As for the conspiracy theories that surface in the comments: I guess that many people affected by the problem *do* have a genuine (god, how I hate that word) copy of Windows. If I'm not completely mistaken a valid license is required to receive new virus definitions. So why would anybody in their right mind "pirate" the operating system, which is crucial for many aspects of their daily work and for some people the only viable and/or only option known to exist, and then actually buy an overpriced virus scanner for which many better and cheaper or entirely free options exist - especially when it's highly unlikely that their copy of XP came with a 30 day trial version of Symantec products.

Hmm...

After a Windows Update a couple of days ago, my PC went out. Hmm... a strange coincidence. Too bad I already formatted it and reinstalled from another WinXP disk my roommates happened to have lying around.... This information might've been handy then...

The Norton Virus

WARNING: A virus has been detected on your computer.
Your computer has been infected with the Norton Anti-Virus Virus .... ....
There was an error removing this virus, please contact technical support
with your license key, windows recover disk, and proof of purchise. .... ....
System halted. .... ....
There was an error loading Windows XP, if this is the first time you have seen....

And shortly afterward

From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
CC: [e-mail]
Subject: Mission Accomplished

Hi Bill,

Done as requested. That will be one billion; pleasure doing business with you.

-John

Great news

Just more reason for people to move away from the Virus Magnet. Hello, Linux calling!!!!

No sympathy for pirates

First off, let me say I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who is unable to recover their PC after this snafu because they were running a pirated version of Windows. No sympathy whatsoever.

Now, for all of those who were running a legitimate version of Windows and a legitimate version of Norton who were affected by this problem (probably a small percentage of all systems actually affected..) it really does suck.. and there are two sources of fault, here:

1) MS. Aren't critical OS files supposed to be protected, such that they can't be unwillingly be deleted or modified? Maybe this is part of the reason why MS didn't want AV vendors to have kernel mode access to Vista..

2) Norton (duh). How they could manage to screw this up so badly boggles the mind.

as opposed to the updates here in the states?

Yeah, cuz those run like well-oiled machines, assuming the machines in question are McCormick rapers. (does the work of a hundred men!)

F-Secure too

Strangely enough, F-Secure also ran into a false positive on a Windows system file (shdocvw.dll) on the same day, and on the Simplified and Traditional Chinese editions of Windows...

Pegasus Email Client Also Affected

This update also incorrectly identifies the Pegasus email client executable file as the Trojan.Dropper virus. An email to Semantic got nothing in return except instruction on how to remove a virus that I don't actually have.

Re:no sympathy

So, you have no sympathy for paying customers because many other people in the same country presumably did not pay? I think there are about 1300 million Chineese - you should allow yourself not to judge them all together.

Re:no sympathy

This ought to teach them a good anti-piracy lesson.

Perhaps they should have pirated something like ClamWin instead?

Re:no sympathy

That makes about as much sense as saying they should nuke all Windows installations because world-wide there's many more pirated ones. And how is that exactly going to do anything:

1. "Damn, my pirated copy stopped working"
    "You should have bought a real copy"
    "Would that have helped?"
    "No."
2. ???
3. Piracy problem solved

Re:no sympathy

The difference is that when you buy a "real copy" of something, you usually also acquire the privilege to call someone and complain when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. In the USA, that's process is called a law suit.

Oh really? And how many Americans have sued MS, despite billions of dollars in damage for lost time and data due to their software not working as advertised over the last 25 years?

Re:Be careful what you wish for...

might inadvertently end up forcing them to use Linux instead

And this would be bad because...?

Re:Be careful what you wish for...

Because China buying Linux would create a change.
Change creates unknown circumstances.
People often have an innate fear of the unknown.
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to the Darkside.

Therefore, Chinese workers using Linux would cause an influx of Sith who would surely wipe us out. Just follow basic logic.

Re:no sympathy

> I've got no sympathy for the Chinese.

Expressing as much stupidity in only 8 words certainly is a world record.

What next ? You've got no sympathy for blacks, blonds, left-handed or bue-eyed people ?

Racism at its best !

Re:windows CDs

The last Windows machine I used was my old IBM Thinkpad. It had a restore partition and came with no CD media at all. Guess I'd have been shafted for one, even though my copy was 100% genuine.

Bob

Re:In [un]Related News...

Yep that was my first thought.
Symantec is showing it's gratitude to Microsoft for enabling their business model on Microsoft designed weaknesses.
One hell of a way to root out the pirated copies of Windows...

Re:windows CDs

I avoided prepackaged computer systems throughout the 90s for precisely that reason. Knowing the state of software copyright laws at the time, if I wasn't going to receive a full backup copy of all the software necessary to restore the system from ground zero then I wasn't interested in the system. That said I did have to make a few long distance phone calls to USR to be given a dial-in BBS number to download updated drivers for one of their 56k modems. Generic drivers only worked to 2400.

I saw it as a travesty when the computer industry offloaded millions of systems between '94 and '00 with little or no factory backup disks. I was even less amused when companies began shipping restoration image disks which only worked if the (usually flawed) software on the disk determined that the system needed to be restored--and usually did so without any consideration paid to settings which had been customized by the user after the system was shipped.

Re:Pity the poor choices of consumers... and pirat

What does any of this have to do with good design? If a program can be downloaded and run from the internet, it can be a virus. It's part of the risk of having a networked world. When you are using the most common OS, you will need some form of anti-virus software. If OS X or Linux were the most common OS, they would need anti-virus software as well. As long as people have the ability to run unsafe code (and yes that can be done on Linux and OS X), they can get viruses. This is Symantec being incredibly irresponsible. Failing to find something like this in pre-update testing (or the failure to test updates) is insane and they should be required to pay for repairs.

Re:Pity the poor choices of consumers... and pirat

What does any of this have to do with good design?

Are you serious? The whole AV software market is a crutch for the lame design of Monkeysoft.

When you are using the most common OS, you will need some form of anti-virus software.

I see you've been drinking the Redmond Red flavour of Kool-Aid. UNIX is a common OS and it's been around for 37 years and networked for all that time. Why is there no AV software market for UNIX? What are the two most common implementation languages for Monkeysoft viruses? Monkeysoft has been on the Internet since about 1995. How much time have Monkeysoft users lost to viruses? Whose OS is the most 'botted?

Is all this Symantec's fault for not protecting Monkeysoft better?

If you replace "common" with "most vulnerable", your statement makes sense.

If a program can be downloaded and run from the internet, it can be a virus.

Sure... and if it runs with root or root-like privileges, it can do serious damage. Guess which OS lets that happen? To protect yourself, you can install AV software and dedicate one (or both) of your dual CPU cores to constantly scanning every file that is accessed so you can be "safe". A fine value proposition for your computer investment.

This is Symantec being incredibly irresponsible. Failing to find something like this in pre-update testing (or the failure to test updates) is insane and they should be required to pay for repairs.

I agree that Symantec made a serious error in deploying an updated defence for the weak OS that they make money defending. But I bet they'll pay nothing, or at least as much to pirates as they do to licensed owners.

Re:symantec

In related news: two weeks ago, Norman (not to be confused with Norton) released an update to its antivirus package, which got automatically installed by the Internet update service for signatures.
This update caused many PCs and servers to stop dead, especially in company network environments.
Until today, the only thing the Norman company has been able to come up with is a series of patches that are to be manually installed, and a recommendation to turn off the on-access scanner.

Re:'The cure is worse than the disease'...

no, a quadraplegic wouldnt protect you against anything.

a better analogy would be

Buying a Symantec product to protect your Windows PC is like hiring a suicide bomber to be your bodyguard.

it protects you, and blows you and everyone around you to pieces in the same run!

Re:no sympathy

nonsense. Plenty of Chinese people purchase computers from Lenovo, Dell, Sony, Toshiba. They all paid for those licenses, just like the rest of us. Most Chinese computer users aren't haxor geeks who build their own computer and install pirate versions. I just helped a Chinese girl yesterday reinstall her VAIO laptop.

Re:no sympathy

Actually, I don't have sympathy for the lot of them.

No sympathy for the Chinese since 90% of the software they use is pirated.

No sympathy for Microsoft when it allows the deletion of a couple files which can cause a BSOD.

No sympathy for Symantec that turns out a shitty update that targets files that it shouldn't kill.

About the only people I can feel sorry for are the 10% of Chinese that actually spent the money to buy legitimate copies of the software.

Re:no sympathy

Exactly! This is precisely why MS wanted to prevent antivirus products (amongst others) from running in kernel mode in vista in the first place. I believe Symantec was one of the most vocal opponents of this decision, even though there is no technical reason for allowing antivirus software into the kernel in the first place, as Trend Micro and others all had vista-compatible solutions that worked without requiring kernel access.

Back when that story was making news, there was a lot of commentry here on /. saying that MS shouldn't be restricting access to the kernel, but this just goes to show that the people who demand access to it often shouldn't have access to it. I know that the problem in the article relates to XPSP2 but the fact remains - Symantec shouldnt be installing kernel mode drivers in the first place.

Note to self

Don't project negative moderation in the subject of your comment.